Unschooling Journal

I’ve often heard that kids cannot choose their own courses in school because they have no idea what they want to do or where their interests truly lie, and therefore must have a “well-rounded” education. After all, if left to their own devices won’t children focus solely on the subjects they enjoy and damn the rest? Won’t little Susie just attend four straight hours of art classes followed by a spattering of math (which she only likes because it helps her know how to draw better)? Won’t Billy surround himself with chemistry books and Bunsen burners, never to read a lick of poetry? Or far more likely, won’t they all just do nothing at all? Therefore it must be practical to herd children from one classroom to another, bringing them to a mediocre level at everything in hopes that they will succeed at something. School must prepare children to succeed in society, in the “Real World,” and must provide with as many fundamentals as possible in order to do so.

While my tone might be a bit more confrontational (I wonder why?), I think this sums up the argument most people would provide for supporting the Well-Rounded Education concept. And it sounds like common sense. Children are ignorant of the world and, we can assume by this argument, of their own long-term interests, and need exposure to a wide-array of subjects in order to insure their success. But I would like to point out the issues that I have with this argument, and the assumptions it makes about children. And if you have a different view that shows mine as false, I would love to hear it. The last thing I want to do is promote a learning methodology that does not best serve children.

The explicit end goal is assimilation and gainful employment

Proponents of this system make it clear that learning in and of itself is not at all a justifiable action. John Dewey (the father of the modern education system) went so far as to call learning a selfish endeavor for which “there is no obvious social motive” and “there is no clear social gain.” In order to be useful, then, we must learn the things that our society needs us to know, and not necessarily the subjects we wish to pursue.

But if the purpose of life is happiness on earth, as I truly believe, then the sole purpose of learning is to achieve happiness, or at very least to assist in its achievement. And if you wish to make the argument that one cannot be happy unless accepted into society and gainfully employed, not only is that simply not true, but a well-rounded education is not even the best means to achieve such an end.

Most people are not virtuosos. We enjoy a handful of things. And it is from that handful that our life’s work should grow, naturally, like an extracurricular activity. If instead the common mind is made to be common at all things, never allowed to focus and therefore excel at the few things that he truly loves, how have we helped that child? He will spend his life pursuing goals that are not his own, and moving in a circle of society without his peers. And while I do not enjoy making the practical point, the fact is that the best possible thing for everyone is for everyone to pursue his own passions. The world is built on the shoulders of the few men and women who actually do it, and I can imagine the incredible results as more and more do as well.

Children cannot be trusted

This portion of the myth is predominantly psychological, having to do with our own twisted concepts of authority and trust that are inevitably thrust upon our innocent children. As John Holt writes in How Children Learn:

All I am saying in this book can be summed up in two words - Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple - or more difficult. Difficult, because to trust children we must trust ourselves - and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.

We are convinced as children that we are dependent, primitive and too new to the world to make any choices or know our own interests and personalities. Somehow all of our desires are generalized as whims and our paths an unpredictable digressions. And so we live in a world of authority where every grownup knows better. And our personalities, distinctive nearly from the day we are born, are either beaten down the moment we cause an adult anxiety, or simply trivialized as childish silliness.

In school the assumptions made about us become justified. We don’t like some or all of our classes, we become easily bored or aggitated. We read when we should be listening, or talk when we should be reading. So it’s true, we’re just little ignorant bastards that want to cause trouble, and we definitely cannot be trusted with our own education. Nevermind that most of the classes seem so useless to us, that the one class you love moves so slowly when you want to know more and more, that the teaching methods - which need to appeal to the lowest common denominator - are driving you mad with boredom. No, that can’t be it… it must be you.

Again, quoting John Holt:

Of two ways of looking at children now growing in fashion - seeing them as monsters of evil who must be beaten into submission, or as little two-legged walking computers whom we can program into geniuses, it is hard to know which is worse, and will do more harm.

The worst harm of course is that we grow up, we have children, and begin the cycle again. And it is a violent, debilitating and often humiliating cycle of degradation and totalitarianism. Grace Llewellyn writes in The Teenage Liberation Handbook:

Most of what teachers know about teaching has to do with classroom management (a.k.a. “discipline”)… But schools push you beyond intimidation; they shame you into believing you need them… It boils down to something called “blaming the victim”: school [and parents] blames you instead of itself for your intellectual influenza. When they tell you the reason you don’t do your schoolwork well enough is that you have no drive, curiosity, or love of learning, you start believing them… Once they convince you of this, through intimidation and shame, it’s over; you submit without much argument to twelve years of it. [Brackets mine]

No one actually has a well-rounded education

This particular point is ex post facto, but I think it’s worth pointing out. After all, if the entire system of well-roundedness does not produce a well-rounded adult, we can assume two things: it doesn’t work, and the world still hasn’t blown up without everyone knowing Algebra and 18th century poets.

Now, there are of course people who are very knowledgeable in multiple, if not several subjects. And I can assure you that 99% of those people chose to pursue every single one of them. The rest of the adults in the world stick to the stuff they love, and always have. Every test they took from 1st grade to 12th in a subject that they didn’t enjoy has been long forgotten, probably within an hour of completing it. And this is because you simply cannot force learning. In fact, when you attempt to force the mind to do anything, you generally get the opposite of your desired result. And in the case of schools, you get generation after generation of kids who hate learning, because they have been convinced that learning is about doing everything you hate instead of pursuing the few things you love.

Learning is selfish, just like Dewey said. And that’s a good thing. School is coercion, just like Holt and Llewellyn said. And that is a terrible, terrible thing. Children can be and should be trusted with their own minds, just like us adults should learn to trust ourselves with our own minds.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.